


On This Day

by evewithanapple



Category: Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Character Study, Gen, commentary available
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-18
Updated: 2011-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-27 12:35:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/295926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evewithanapple/pseuds/evewithanapple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The life and times of Francis Sullivan, alias Jack Kelley.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On This Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eirenical (chibi1723)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chibi1723/gifts).



The day Francis Sullivan was born, Jesse James was shot in the back of the head. The news was telegraphed to New York in short order, and had filtered through the streets before the day was out. Out on the Lower East Side, boys toting toy guns ran up and down the street, pointing their makeshift weapons at each other and shouting “Bang! Shot you dead!” The newspapermen, meanwhile, were cloistered inside their offices, sweating and pounding away at their typewriters, trying to finish the story in time to rush it to print. Their delivery boys didn’t wait. Instead, they shifted over to Carnegie and Madison Avenue, calling “Jesse James is dead!” after wealthy passing customers in hopes of unloading their papers. Business was good for them that day.

The day Francis Sullivan was born, a dock labourer was knocked from the barge he was standing on by a cargo hook, cracking his head on the handle as he fell. The other workers shouted their alarm, but it was no use; he disappeared into the river before any of them could move to pull him back. An hour later, his body was dredged from the water, soaked and bloated with the debris of the Hudson River. The cadaver was wrapped in canvas and borne off home.

Francis Sullivan, less than a day old, understood none of this. When the door to his parents’ squalid, freezing tenement room was thrown open, he squalled fitfully at the noise and the wind, but had no comprehension of who had come in, or what they were saying. Nor did he understand why the woman holding him was wailing, or why the other people in the room seemed to have joined her. He only knew that the room seemed very cold.

 

* * * *

 

“Jack?”

He keeps his eyes closed.

“Hey, Jack?” The person calling him, uncomfortably close to his ear, jostles his shoulder. Jack gives up and opens his eyes. “What is it?”

Ike’s face is hanging over him, anxious in the early morning gloom. “One of the guys who came in last night- the one who’s all beat up-”

Jack drags a hand across his eyes, in a futile effort to shake off the last remnants of sleep. “What about him?”

“Jack-” Ike’s face is red, eyes overbright. If Jack had to hazard a guess, he’d say the smaller boy had been crying. “Jack, he ain’t _breathing_.”

Jack is out of bed before the last syllable had left Ike’s mouth, and had bounded across the room before the younger boy has a chance to realize that he’s up. The rest of the boys are clustered around the injured one’s bed, several of them snuffling quietly. They part as he approached, and he bends over the prone form of their injured bunkmate.

There’s no sound or movement, although he supposed there wouldn’t be. A finger laid against the boy’s cheek comes away cold, meeting nothing but stiff flesh. He died during the night- hours earlier, by the look of him. His eyes are still half-open. Jack passes a hand gently over his face to close them.

He looks up and shakes his head. A few of the younger boys are huddling close to each other, eyes wide. Most of them probably haven’t seen a dead body before. He jerks his head at them. “Get ‘em out of here.”

Racetrack collars two with a muttered “c’mon,” and the rest follow, looking for all the world like slightly lost ducklings. Jack rubs his eyes with the back of his hand again, feeling the earlier exhaustion setting in again. He went to sleep- what was it, four hours ago? And now the sun is rising.

“Hey Jack.”

He glances up. The new kid- Crutchie- is looking at him oddly, an embarrassed, hesitant smile in his face. “What?”

The younger boy scratches awkwardly at his head with one hand, balancing against the bedpost with the other. Jack supposes he comes by his name honestly. “Well Race says it’s your birthday today. S’not all that happy, but- happy birthday.” He gives a small shrug, and hops off.

Jack stares after him, then shakes his head slightly, trying to clear the cobwebs. He really doesn’t remember if it’s his birthday or not- maybe Race just guessed- but he doesn’t have time to celebrate in any case. He has a body to carry off downstairs.

 

* * * *

 

Six years after Francis Sullivan was born, he got into his first fight. He and his mother were living on Orchard Street then, sharing the tenement with three other families, each with four children apiece. Francis was the youngest.

Each morning, after breakfast was eaten, their mothers would shoo the children out onto the street to play, before shutting up their rooms and walking downstairs to where Mr. Harris had opened up a sweatshop earlier in the year. They worked there until about seven at night, sometimes leaning out of the windows to shout warnings at their children playing below. Mary Sullivan was usually the one sitting closest to the window.

Most days, Francis was the smallest one among their gang, but that day it was different. A new woman had arrived at the shop, towing an even younger boy in her wake. She dropped him amidst the other children with a harried admonishment of “Jack, _behave_ ,” before vanishing up the steps and into the building. Francis took little notice of the newcomer, but the older boys did.

“Lookit him sucking his thumb!” jeered Albert Busch. He was the biggest of them, nearing ten, and Francis suspected that the only reason he wasn’t out working was because he was too stupid to follow orders. “Are you crying for your mama? Baby!”

“I bet he is,” piped up Albert’s younger brother. “I bet he cries all the time. I bet he _wets the bed_.” He pressed closer to the smaller boy’s face. “Bet you do! Crybaby!”

The littler boy- Jack- was, in fact, sucking his thumb, but he said nothing in response to their taunts. All he did was stare forward blankly. Francis wasn’t even sure if he’d heard them.

“Are you dumb, too?” Albert kicked out a foot at him. Tears filled Jack’s eyes, but still he said nothing.

“Leave him alone.” Francis said.

Albert turned. Here was better sport; this prey was trying to bite back. “Make me.”

Francis clenched both fists at his sides. “Wanna see me try?”

The first blow knocked him off his feet and onto the dirty cobblestones below; the second landed in his ribs. He yelped, trying to scramble out of their reach, but Albert wasn’t finished yet. He grabbed Francis by the collar and hauled him up. “Gonna run away now? Like the crybaby over there?”

Francis swung a fist. Too busy jeering, Albert didn’t see it coming, and it knocked the wind out of his stomach. He dropped Francis to the ground, wheezing, but his brother was still standing. He drove another kick at him, this time aimed directly at his face. Francis heard something crack, and felt a gush of hot blood spill down his mouth and chin.

“You lot!” The cry wasn’t from the window today, but rather from the front step. “You lot, stop that!” Albert’s brother, either too stupid to listen or too intent on inflicting further bruises, kept going until a hand came descending from above and hauled him up by the collar. Francis was still gasping on the ground.

“ _Enough_!”  Adam Leiserman from next door was shaking the boy by the collar, red-faced. “Think you’re a big man, beating a boy half your size? Off with you!” He set the boy down on the ground, and Albert and his brother took off around the corner.

Adam bent to where Francis was still lying. “You all right, son?”

Francis, feeling somewhat dizzy and disoriented, cracked an eye open. “Did I get them?”

Adam chuckled, lifting him to his feet. “You sure did.”

Francis glanced over to where Jack was still huddled, next to the front stoop, and allowed a smile to creep over his face. “Good.”

 

* * * *

 

Jack doesn’t remember when he picked up drawing; perhaps it was as a child, scribbling on the tenement walls. What he does know is that he has a hidden wall up on the roof, covered by canvas, unseen (he thinks- or hopes) by anyone but him. He likes to scratch away at it sometimes, when he’s in a blacker mood than usual. He has miniature landscapes the size of bricks- more than a few resemble his picture of Santa Fe- a few running horses, and the occasional caricature, usually of a cigar-puffing Pulitzer expanding over his desk like an overstuffed pastry.

The night Crutchie is arrested, he returns to his spot on the roof. He spends the first hour doing nothing but staring over the rooftops, moodily kicking pebbles over the edge; he isn’t in the mood for anything else. But he’s still Jack Kelley, and what Jack Kelley does best- what he always does- is sketch. So he obeys the gravitational pull over to his makeshift canvas. Inspiration never does fail him, even when he’s ready to throw in the towel. Even when a boy is lying in the Refuge with two broken legs because of him and a dozen others are sporting fresh bruises and grinning through it all, because they think it’s a _game_. He knows exactly what to draw when these things happen.

So he draws. First a sketch of Racetrack, a triumphant grin on his face as he waves his winnings in the air. Then David and his brother, both clad in new suits, well-fed and smiling from ear to ear. Ike with that pet dog he’s always wanted. Specs with glasses that work properly, and without his customary squint. Finch with a new watch.

Lastly- and he does put it off, because thinking about it makes him feel like he’s rubbing sandpaper against raw skin- he draws Crutchie, both legs unbroken and straight, a new crutch in hand.  He draws him beaming, one hand raised in a wave, an empty paper bag slung over his free shoulder.

No one ever tells him that art has to be true, but he’s always adhered to the idea in the past. What makes tonight different is that he really doesn’t care anymore whether his pictures will ever come true. If that makes him a liar- well, he’s told worse lies.

 

* * * *

 

The day Francis Sullivan died, Jack Kelley was born.

He’d planned the escape from the Refuge for six months- long enough to familiarize himself with the routine of wagons coming and going, and what time the guards would be looking the other way. It was an easy enough job. The guards looked the other way an awful lot.

His plan was simple enough: after lunch was served, Snyder and his cronies were usually closeted in the smoking room (what did a refuge need a smoking room for?) and the hallway was clear for at least half an hour. His visitors always stayed for even longer than that, sometimes touring through the rooms to see if conditions were “up to code.” Depending on which rooms they went to first (and usually they started on the top floor and worked their way down) he had an extra five or ten minutes to get away before they noticed his absence. It would be an uncomfortable half-hour, hanging on to the bottom of the carriage, but he’d endured worse in the refuge. And they never checked the carriages as they were leaving.

Warning was easy enough to come by- whenever Snyder came sweeping through ordering that they clean the place, it meant that someone was coming to see it. He had his meagre belongings hidden in a bag behind his bedpost; it was only a matter of grabbing it and making for the doors.

They got extra warning that week. Usually it was only a few days before the visit that they had to make things presentable; when Francis' escape opportunity came up, Snyder had them scrubbing the floors a full two weeks before his guest arrived. Francis spent both weeks biting his knuckles in frustration, waiting for the door to open. After six months of planning, would the opportunity never come?

But come it eventually did, and the entire building seemed to hold its breath as the floorboards above their head creaked. Francis wasted no time once he heard the door to the smoking room close. He grabbed the bag, shoved his feet into his shoes, and ran for the doorway. He could feel the other boys’ eyes boring into him as the door closed; he tried not to think too hard about that.

There were a few bad moments as the floorboards creaked under his feet; once, he heard the murmured voices above his head stop, and he froze in place for a solid minute before they resumed. But the coast was clear as he’d guessed it would be, and once he made it to the front hall, it was easy enough to dart down the front steps, duck under the carriage, and get a firm grip on the bottom of the carriage. The wait was, as he’s anticipated, tiring- his hands ached fiercely by the time the visitor arrived- but he let out a long sigh of relief when the wheels began to turn. _Safe_.

As soon as they were a few blocks away from the Refuge and stopped, he let go of the carriage and rolled out to the sidewalk as the driver started off again. His hands were covered in calluses and his head ached where he’d hit it against the carriage, but it didn’t matter. He was _free_.

“Hey kid.”

Francis froze for a momebt before registering that the voice belonged to someone scarcely older than him, and turned. Another boy was looking at him oddly- belatedly, Francis realized that he must be covered with dust from the road- and proffered a newspaper. “Penny a pape? Someone lady in Massachusetts killed her dad with an axe.”

Francis shook his head. “No money. Where’s Massachusetts?”

The other boy shrugged. “England maybe.” He stuffed the paper back in his bag, then took a closer look at Francis. “Hey, you got a place to stay?”

“I’ll find one.” he said reflexively. His mother had died two years earlier- cholera- but he was sure there was some place he could curl up. Then a thought occurred to him. “How much money do you make on those?”

Another shrug. “Depends who’s buying. A dollar a day, if I’m lucky. Half goes to Pulitzer and another quarter to the lodging house, though.” Another closer look. “I can take you there, if you want. What’s your name?”

“Fr-” He cut himself off midsentence. He needed a new name now, didn’t he? His mother’s name before she’d married his dad had been Kelley, he remembered. “Kelley. Jack Kelley.”

“Well come on, Jack Kelley,” the older boy said, “or they’ll close the gates on us.”

The sun was setting, he realized. The streets were painted red-gold in the late afternoon light. He turned to take a long look at the street- it would be there the next morning, he realized, and the next and the next, with no gate keeping him from it- and turned to walk towards the lodging house.

**Author's Note:**

> DVD commentary is available at my [journal](http://inthewildwood.livejournal.com/12697.html)! Not with 80% more nerdy historical flailing.


End file.
